Learning about the Common Frog and Toad
While I am passionate about nature and wildlife, I’m not a nature expert, but in the last five or six years I’ve begun to take my learning a bit more seriously. It’s fun to be out on a walk and be able to recognise a flower growing by the path or a bird swooping overhead, it brings you closer to the natural world and helps you understand the dangers that threaten it.
My most recent learning experience came recently, while out walking with a friend and her two young children. Now that we are officially in spring, the equinox being passed on the 20 March, the weather seems to have taken things quite literally and it’s been glorious sunshine for the last two weeks (roughly). My friend suggested taking a walk through a local country park, her daughter is nature mad and was determined to see a frog. The last time we met back in late summer we had walked through the same country park and been swept up in a mass froglet walkabout, as hundreds of tiny frogs left their pond and headed for new autumn/winter homes.
My friend’s daughter is now convinced that when I go walking with them, we will see frogs, so off we set on a frog adventure.
There are three ponds in the country park, the first pond was disappointingly frogless, we didn’t even see any snails. Abandoning that we took a detour to the play park and then ventured up to the larger main pond. In great excitement I pointed out two frogs swimming through the water towards the edge of the pond, together we all peered into the murky depths hoping they wouldn’t disappear too soon. Our excitement quickly turned to amazement, and then outright wonder, as we realised there weren’t just two frogs in the pond, there were hundreds.
Our eyes travelled slowly across the water, and everywhere we looked there were masses of frogs - swimming, croaking, resting on floating twigs or broken reeds. The place was alive with them and what we had taken for some sort of water bird call was the combined croaking of hundreds of frogs. I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many frogs in the one pond, as a child I used to visit this country park regularly (in those days you’d watch parents scoop up frog’s spawn in jam jars, but I never remember wanting to do that or my parents letting me) and I only recall a few years where there were a high number of frogs and spawn in the water. Nothing like the numbers we were seeing now.
My friend’s daughter was delighted, and we spent a long time walking round the edge of the water spotting frogs, this led my friend and I to start questioning everything we knew about frogs - What did they eat? How do you know if it’s a male or a female? Where do they go in winter? Halfway round the pond we spotted a sign warning us not to disturb or remove frog or toad spawn from the pond, which led to the next question, how do you tell the difference between a frog and a toad? How many of these so-called frogs in the pond were actually toads?
When we eventually made it to the final pond, a quiet backwater surrounded by trees, and more overgrown than the main pond, I began some frantic googling to find out as much as I could about frogs and toads.
What do common frogs and toads eat? Frogs are carnivores, they eat flies, slugs, snails and even smaller amphibians sometimes. Toads have a similar diet but have been known to eat slow worms, grass snakes and even mice.
How do you know if it’s a male or a female frog/toad? After some googling I’ve learned that in many frog species the female tends to be larger than the male, this is the case for the common frog which is widespread in the UK. The common toad is similar, with larger females, the female is also browner than the male toad.
Where do frogs and toads go in winter? In the winter, frogs leave their ponds and hibernate under rocks, in mud, piles of leaves or compost heaps. I remember finding a frog in our greenhouse once during the winter months. Toads again are very similar to frogs, hibernating in the winter. Toads are also famous for their February migration, when the air is growing warmer, they start making their way back to their breeding ponds.
How do you tell the difference between a frog and a toad? Frogs have smooth skin, toads are much more warty (something that often comes up in books about magic or witches, it’s often used as an insult, poor toads). Toads almost always have dry skin while frogs often look wet in or out of water. Frog’s legs tend to be longer than their bodies while toads are much squatter.
After my quick intake of google knowledge, especially this wonderful article from the Woodland Trust site, I spent the rest of our frog/toad adventure trying to help my friends daughter correctly identify the amphibian she was looking at. This involved a lot of squinting at frogs/toads trying to calculate their leg to body length and deciding if they looked smooth skinned and damp, or warty and dry.
By the end of our walk, I now knew more about the common frog and toad than I had ever planned to learn, and hopefully had a better chance of correctly telling apart my frogs and toads in future, which is why you should always go walking with a nature mad 4-year-old.
Curious to know more about the common frog and toad’s place in our diminishing natural world I ventured onto google later in the day. The common frog and toad are widespread across the UK but have begun to decline in recent years, as is often the case for wild animals, the loss of breeding habitat is a big part of this fall in numbers. According to the Wildlife Trust site around half a million ponds have been lost during the last 100 years - neglect, development, and chemicals from rain that has run-off farmland or roads, are all part of the problem.
There are ways we can help pondlife though; about a year ago I read John Lewis-Stempel’s book ‘Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond’, it was a fascinating read and gave me an in-depth look at pond life and how much wildlife relies on these tranquil pools of water. The book also has a chapter at the end advising you on how to build a pond, something I will most definitely be doing this summer, in the hope of attracting a few frogs and toads to my garden, as well as helping other wildlife thrive.
I have also ensured that I will forever more be known, by my friend’s daughter, as the woman who finds frogs.
Interesting articles on frogs, toads and ponds
The Common Frog - Scottish Wildlife Trust
The Common Toad - Scottish Wildlife Trust
What is the difference between a frog and a toad? - The Woodland Trust
Ponds - The Wildlife Trust
Restoring lost farmland ponds - The WWT
How to build a pond - The Wildlife Trust
How to create a mini pond - The Wildlife Trust
Planning a pond for wildlife - RSPB
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